Forrest Gump Was Right: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

There’s nonsense, and there’s common sense. Let’s hope for a revival of the latter in 2022.

Submitted for your consideration:

• In August 2020, the Chicago Tribune offered this headline: “University of Chicago students call for defunding, abolishing school police during rally outside university president’s house.” That same publication offered this headline just 16 months later: “University of Chicago international students rally to demand safety upgrades a week after fatal shooting of recent grad.”
• In July 2020, major loon London Breed, presumably looking out for the best interests of San Francisco residents as their mayor, giddily announced $120 million in cuts to the budget of the city’s police force over the next two years. Sixteen months later, she asks the board of supervisors for an emergency increase in public-safety spending, declaring—with a straight face—“it is time for the reign of criminals to end.” Without, of course, acknow-ledging her own role in establishing that reign.
• In June 2020, with smoke still choking Portland following weeks of rioting, that community’s City Council haksawed $15 million from the police budget, with certain shrill members urging further steps to slash $50 million total. Seventeen months later, the City Council signed off on a $5.2 million increase in the police budget in a too-little-too-late attempt to get a handle on the entirely predictable surge in crime.

So it’s come to this: after a year and a half of looting, indiscriminate arson and flash-mob retail robberies, the light is starting to go off over the heads of big-city leaders, telling them that voters are not happy with soaring levels of crime. Crime, by the way, that has disproportionately burdened the very people they claimed to have been looking out for with their calls to turn police forces into legions of hand-holding social workers. 

And a lot of those people paid for this folly with their lives.

So would it be hoping for too much to think that 2022 might be the year the nation comes back to its senses? Or that the knuckleheads across America who championed this particular form of lunacy will come to appreciate the fact that words—and actions—do indeed have consequences?

We are awash in those consequences today. And crime isn’t the only marker:

Broken supply chains? A systemwide failure of ports to modernize as cargo ships grew ever larger. Of cities that blocked development of the large warehouses needed to accommodate freight in the volumes consumers are demanding today. Of trucking companies whose wages and benefits can’t attract the needed numbers of drivers—trust me: You pay people enough, they’ll do the work. We’re living out the inevitable results of it all.

High energy prices? Let’s see: We get a new administration in 2020 that, on Day One, kills a massive oil pipeline project, populates its executive ranks with clowns who declare a goal of putting fossil fuel companies out of business, limits drilling on federal lands and makes it as painful as possible for oil companies to do what oil companies do—produce oil—then goes begging to the Saudis and the Russians to open the spigots because our gasoline prices are going up. Yes, yes, the greedy oil companies must be the problem.

Inflation? Gee … what might happen if we dropped, oh, say $6 trillion into a $20 trillion economy, and had 30 per-cent more dollars chasing even fewer goods (see: Broken supply chains, above). In pursuit of editorial balance, Ingram’s has always tried to be inclusive in its annual economic forecasts over the years. So we invite commentary from across the spectrum, even from a few of the out-there economists whom no one would brand as pillars of as conservative fiscal policy. That includes one who has gone on from local university faculty to presidential-campaign consultancy, preaching a gospel of unlimited printing at the U.S. Mint. Well, we threw money at all of our problems. Anyone seeing a connection here?

In a lot of ways, America is like the college sophomore squinting through the dawn after a raucous fraternity party, wondering what the hell happened last night and how we’re going to explain the property damage and the body count to the national office and the campus chancellor. As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. We disregard common sense at our peril.

And now we’re going to foist the repair bill for all of this on our kids.

Terrific. Just … terrific.